One Shots
by EllieInLove
Summary: What was meant to only be a collection of Bethyl one-shots has apparently turned into my idea of the reunion. Takes place during/immediately after "Alone."
1. Run

_You know. You know, Beth._

_You know what- who- changed my mind._

_You matter._

_You mean something to me. I will never let anything happen to you_- a lie- _I will keep you safe. I will __keep you here. We can make pretend, play house like I'm not some dirty old redneck bastard who never did __nothin' and you're some kind of shining fucking paragon-_

He had not thought this, not while fighting the walkers, got him stuck in that creepy mortuary room in the cellar. Then, all he'd thought was, _Beth, buy Beth time. Get the fuck out. Kill as many of these __motherfuckers as possible, run Beth-_ (It had never been like that before. Yes, he'd always been alert. He'd always kept his eyes open, watched out for his family, such as it was. But it had always been a- the kind of thrill you can't talk about for shame, because you know it's wrong, but it doesn't change it. A bloodrush, the way everything in his body focused, and got quiet no matter how loud those things moaned and groaned and growled, and god, just being good at something for the first time in his life, so good that he was useful to other people, needed, respected. The zombie apocalypse that everyone else rued, despised, cursed, died in; it was the only thing that made him worthwhile. But he'd never been- not like that.)

He made it out, he couldn't believe he fucking made it out of that death house, the fresh air feels like benediction- her bag, spilled on the ground, his whole body flushes with a painful heat, a rush of understanding, fucking losing- fucking tail lights- _Beth! Beth!_

He thought nothing but her name for miles. A mantra, a plea, a marching song. Each footfall was her name.

Every step, he lost a bit of that spark. That fire she started. Goddamn her.

A goddamned intersection.

When he finally goes down, dropping his weapon, dropping his guard, his hope, that's when he thinks of these things. _Beth._

_What did you do to me?_

_Beth, I can't. Beth, it's my fault, again. You were wrong. The person you thought I was, he's in that car with __you, you took him with you. I failed, I fucked up. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Hershel..._

All those miles, he hadn't thought of these things. They'd nipped at his heels, but he'd been too fast for them (not fast enough). Now, he hangs his head, he hears Merle, his father, his mother. Beth singing that goddamned song, like she's trying to tell him somethin', like she's using that angel-voice to kill him.

He was gone in thoughts of her. It wasn't until Joe, another dirty old bastard, smirked, told him, "Why hurt yourself when you can hurt other people?" and it was against everything Beth, that naive little girl, stood for.

He hates Joe. Like his father, like his brother. Like his absent mother. Like himself- who Beth said he _had _been.

_You have to stay who you are._

In that moment, the only thing that matters is surviving Joe, his bandits, proving them wrong. He's not just some outdoor stray cat.

It's the only thing that matters.


	2. Don't Sleep

He can't sleep. 

Well, he could. His eyes can close. Eventually physical exhaustion overtakes the spinning wheels in his head.

But when he sleeps, he dreams. They started a fire, that house, but their clothes were going up, too, and he could see her flesh start to slip, the skin rippling in the heat, bubbling. But then- her hair in his hands, in his face when she hugs him. The smell of her- prison soap, sweat, Judith- the scent of safety, and ripped-away hope. He hears her shout _I won't leave you!_ and there's stale moonshine on his breath.

So he hunts. He smokes. A lot. Every rolled he can find. He tries not to think of her, it seems to make it worse.

When he flinches awake in the middle of the night, he can't tell if he's living a nightmare, or the time with Beth was just a bittersweet, unrealistic dream. In his worst moments, he's angry with her, so fucking angry; she should be here. Or she should have left him alone, before burning the house.

She screamed herself right inside him, a little wisp, a wasp, stinging him now.

Thing is, he's not really mad at her. He can think it; in his head, he can growl all he wants about what a bitch she is, but he doesn't mean it. It's old. It's stale smoke. It's his father's alcoholic sweat. It's all learned behavior that he does with no real heart to it. Besides, everytime he thinks her a bitch, he can't stop the memory, calling her a dumb college bitch or whatever. PIssing in front of her.

Wanting to shock her, to be what she thought of him- what he thought she thought of him. What he really was. Forcing her to not be some wounded child sipping her first liquor. Playing some juvenile game just to shame him. Forcing her to be an adult, because this ain't no fucking game.

She taught him.

He squeezes his eyes shut tight enough to make fireworks pop on the back of his eyelids. Her body slamming into his back, her scrawny bird arms tight around his waist. Like that moment, after the first couple of sobs eeked out of his chest, it was the first real breath he'd taken since... he's not sure.

Knocked right back out of him, shoulda known.

He's not mad at her at all, just himself.


	3. Find

He had been having thoughts.

He tries to hold on to Beth, but he's bitter, and he hears Merle in the back of his head, repeating his own words, _The good ones don't survive._ He thinks that's why he's still here, trudging behind people like Joe and his group- minus Len, these days- and Beth is _gone_. Family, gone. Him standing alone, with those fuckers.

When he toed through the copse of trees, toward Joe and the guy he'd been hunting, he'd been thinking about how far he could get before Joe thought about catching up to him. He was thinking about a good way to hide to let them pass him by. He was thinking about where he'd go from here, where he'd look for the car, if he'd look for it.

He hadn't once thought that he'd cross paths with ghosts.

His next clear, distressing, thought was that Beth was right all along. He's saying something to Joe, he's not even in the cover of the trees anymore and he's not sure when that happened, when his feet moved, he's got his hands out pleading, it's almost a relief when they start beating him.

He understands fists. More than all these feelings he's had since that moonshine.

Later, after the men are dead, all of them, twice over, and the sun has risen, he sits next to Rick and tries. Tries to apologize. Tries to hear Rick when he says it ain't on him.

But Beth is, and he can't- he can't even speak of it, he tries. He tries to explain it to Rick, but he knows now. He knows he was wrong, and she was right, and all his wasted time and mistakes are killing him.

Since he'd seen the Terminus sign, he'd been thinking, he'd have to check it out. Maybe that car drove right up to Terminus' gates with Beth. It may not truly be a sanctuary for all, like Joe said, but if there was a chance... He'd follow Rick there.

And when Glenn, and Sasha and Bob- shit, Maggie, when Maggie steps out of the shadows of that train car, he knows what he has to do.


	4. Trust

He doesn't realize how much he had been touching her, not until he couldn't. Not until she's there, in front of him, and he can't reach her, in his dreams. He doesn't think about carrying her into the kitchen, he doesn't think about piggybacking. What he remembers most, worst, is the smaller ones. His fingers on the inside of her small arm, or on her back, guiding her.

Tryin' to act like it weren't no big thing, but she had to know. How could she not?

The dreams are hard and heavy, in that train car, especially after looking at Maggie's blood-splattered face. They're barely able to tell how long they've all been in there. Someone had been knocking sporadically against the walls, mocking them, like they were pets. At least, until Daryl had thrown himself across the car and tried to put his boot through the metal wall. He drifts in and out, he can't tell if he falls asleep for fifteen minutes or 10 hours. He can't tell if he's been without Beth for years, or two months, or she'd only left when he opened his eyes.

It gets harder when Maggie tells them that they'd found the bus, but it was only Woodbury people, virtual strangers. Not her family. She whispers that they put them all down, to make sure. She says, she hasn't seen Beth, or... Judith.

While Rick flinches at the name of his daughter, he chokes out, "We..." But his voice cracks and Carl is the one to finish: "We found her car seat."

But then Rick turns his head. Rick stares at him, his eyes clearly leaving it in Daryl's hands. Beth.

He has to tell. He has to say something.

He finally nods. He tries to ignore everyone else. Maggie has caught on to something, she leans toward him. She waits. "I got out with Beth." He coughs. "She'd been lookin' for the kids. Wasn't on the bus."

But then his throat fills with all the things he was too shy to say to Beth. He feels as choked as Rick. He feels like an open wound. He feels like a total failure.

Maggie whispers, "What happened?"

And for a second, he wants to be mad that she immediately assumes her sister didn't make it. _Just another dead girl. You see just another dead girl._ He's harsher than he really intends when he says, "She ain't dead. We don't know." But it's ok that he's harsh, that his voice is seething, like all the times Rick's held him back from fighting anyone that pissed him off. It's ok, because he means what he says. So he meets Maggie's eyes, swimming with tears and surprise and confusion, and he repeats, "_We don't know._"

Maggie eventually nods. It's a deal they make, just the two of them.


	5. Escape

Terminus was... not what they expected.

They had been prepared. Prepared for someone like the Governor. Or people like Merle. People like Abraham, or crazy like Morgan, something Rick told him about. But when they strolled in the back door, they'd never thought... It had never occurred to them that _people _would eat other people. He could see it in their eyes, too, all his companions new and old. He could see the sickness there, their stomachs roiling, horrorstruck. Even Rick, who'd talked to his dead wife for a while. Even Glenn, who'd gone into a well after a soggy walker. Even Daryl, who'd briefly worn dead men's ears around his own throat.

All of them, having had to kill those they loved, bullets and knives in brains.

They'd all had their moments. But they'd never... called people to them, promised them safety, and then eaten them.

He knew that, like the near rape of Carl, it would live in them until the day they died. Each of them.

There'd been a kid, he'd helped them, eventually. Before they'd gotten out, Daryl had asked. _About this tall, long blonde hair, usually with a braid. Blue eyes. Looks like a doll. She'd be..._ Daryl'd had to stop and think for a moment, trying to get his bearings. In the end, he still has to guess. _She'd be about nineteen now._ But the kid swears he'd remember a girl his age, especially if she was pretty. Daryl... Daryl won't say it to him, won't admit it, but yeah.

Before they disappear in the woods and run until they are too damned tired to do anymore, they talk about burning the place down. Daryl says nothing on it, except that they'd best be moving quick. He doesn't want to think about the last time he'd seen a place burn.


	6. Limbo

Their first night out of Terminus, they spend the night in a strip mall, the kind with the roll-down fences across the store front. They sit in the total dark, not daring to light a fire in even this small of a town. They eat cold canned yams. Abraham has been giving Rick this spiel about saving the human race, and Daryl's noticed even Eugene and Rosita are rollin' their eyes behind his back, but Rick hasn't made any decisions yet.

It seems everyone else is in limbo but Daryl. He knows what he's doin'.

He interrupts their hushed conversation with a quiet declaration of his own. "I dunno what you're plannin', Rick." He can barely look up, it's so hard to say this. The thought of no family again, not staying with Rick... but Rick is looking at him, like he always did, in that way that both made him want to stand up with pride and slink away in shame and discomfort at the same time. Like Rick respected his opinion. Like Rick saw him as a leader, too, not just some lackey. He has to rush on with what he wants to say, "If you wanna go to DC with them, that's ok. I'll meet up with you down the way. I just gotta..."

He trails off, trying to find the words. The words to say that they found Sophia, so they knew for sure she was gone. They found Carol when they'd already buried a grave for her, and knew she'd been alive. He'd found Merle.

He had to find Beth. Until then, he didn't know, and he had to believe she was out there. He had to have faith.

For a second, one tiny second of utter despair, he thinks of finding Beth turned. He thinks of having to shove a knife through her thinner, small skull.

He shudders with the thought. He hears her voice- an echo of Rick's time following Lori's ghost- _Can't depend on anybody for anything, right?_

He thinks about how, if that's how it is, he'll just stand up and walk until he meets up with Rick and then he'd go from there.

Then he thinks about how that's just like dependin' on someone for somethin', too. And he knows he's going to fail her again.

But he knows he's at least gotta find her first. He fills the silence, finally: "I gotta find Beth. Can't leave her out there."

It feels like the minutes after his decision stretch into fucking forever. It isn't until Abraham mutters, "Oh for fuck's sake," that he thinks to look up at everyone's reactions.

Rick's still lookin' at him. But Maggie and Glenn, then Glenn and Tara, share looks with each other. All these people, god, it suddenly brings a pain to his chest, makes it hard to breathe for a second. The way all these people, strangers from another time, had become a family. Even the ones he didn't know well, even the ones he wasn't sure he liked or trusted yet. The tableaux of it made him wish for Beth all the more, so that she could see it, too. So she could smile that little smile of hers, the one so self-satisfied, so knowing, so _old_, so like her father. That smile that graced their moments of family and solidarity and love.

Bob, he rests a hand on Sasha's shoulder, and is the first to say, "I'll go with you, Daryl."


	7. Change

Bob explains, "You can't be alone out there. We know that." He looks at Sasha, with some sort of smile Daryl feels like he shouldn't really see. A smile that says they understand things that no one else will, because they weren't there. He thinks about how he would have had that with Beth. Bob dispels that horrible thought by adding, "We found Glenn. That was a long shot. So we'll find Beth."

Daryl's honestly surprised it's Bob first, but he can only nod. In gratitude. In forgiveness.

But then he sees resolute looks. He realizes what's going on. Maggie's just nodding her head, her lips pursed together, on the verge of crying again. She's holding Glenn's hand, and she's saying to Abe and Rosita, "I'm sorry, we'll follow you to DC afterwards, if you still go. I know we said we'd help. It's my sister."

Then it's Sasha, Glenn, Tara. Dominos falling. There's some kind of undercurrent between Eugene, Rosita and Abraham, it makes them comical, and another reason Daryl doesn't quite trust them yet.

But it seems Abraham has already figured out how this is going to go down, because he's cursing again, glaring at Eugene. "How many wild goose chases you gonna bring us on, Eugene? Or are we gonna save the fuckin' world, here?" But he says it without real feeling, he's already defeated.

Rosita only mumbles, "The more the merrier, right?"

Rick, Carl, and Michonne, they've already shared their looks. Carl and Michonne, they leave it with the original leader, their leader. His leader.

Rick only says, "'Course we'll find Beth."

It makes Daryl want to cry. He doesn't.

He knows it's more than just Beth they're lookin' for. Each of them. It's Tyreese, too, and the kids they'd never found, Lil Asskicker. Carol, too, somewhere out there, because even screwed up, she was all the family they had anymore. It was purpose. It was the people next to them. He knew he wasn't great with people, not like Beth was, so able to look clear through to their secrets. But how some people couldn't see the way people leaned into one another, the way their eyes couldn't pull away, like magnets, kept sliding toward the others, it baffled him. The way the skin around those eyes softened, lost the deep groove of worry and strain.

People telegraphed everything in their bodies.

_Observant._ He thinks. _Look it up._ Memories from farther away come to him, when he first started to realize Rick was a leader he'd preferred to follow, unlike Merle. When he'd chased after the spectre of Sophia. He thinks of Beth, wondering how he'd been so unaware of her then, how he'd not seen that light before. She'd just been a girl, a member of the family.

He thinks of changing. How he's changed. How they all have.

He nods his head.


	8. Daddy Said

In the ramshackle ghost town they'd holed up in, Daryl's swept most of the place by the time the sun is peaking in the sky. He'd slept for a few hours, but then woken up so energized that he'd relieved all the others of watch until just an hour ago, spending the time trying to fashion some more arrows for the crossbow. He'd nudged awake Michonne with gentle knuckles on her shoulder. After he kills the cashier of a gas station, mostly rotted and slow from starvation, he finds some maps that had fallen mostly under the counter. Mostly bus schedules, but he takes one anyway, because it shows the streets and points to surrounding towns.

What used to be there before Terminus, a bus terminal, like a hub. He took a Georgia map, too, and one of the US, thinking of all they'd lost in the prison. The maps. The manuals. The stores of food. It's getting colder.

He thinks of another winter on the road. He thinks of Beth, shivering.

He's about to slump onto his ass on the floor, a moment of weakness, of being so goddamned _tired_, but before he can, there's a tiny tapping on the window. Maggie's outside, staring in at him with a serious face, tinged with desolation, even with Glenn hovering behind her.

He stands, she steps inside.

She doesn't bother checking around corners, doesn't even bring her hand to her knife. She knows. If Daryl's in here, kneeling over trash and debris, staring into space, it's safe and clear. She leans against the counter. Her fingers dig into each other. Finally, she says, "Sasha didn't think I'd find Glenn. Thought it was... But it was something my daddy'd said. Well," she smiles sadly, "there's a lot of things my daddy said that I think about now. Glenn said it was the same thing that pushed him on. Gotta have faith."

He chews on his lip, warring with grief and guilt and the aura of Beth that he still feels. He tries to meet her eyes, she's waiting patiently for him. After a moment, he mumbles, "'M sorry. About your dad. I..." He's not sure if he wants to say the same he'd said before, _Maybe I could have done something, that's on me_, but instead, other words come out, "I already told Beth. But I'm... real sorry."

She nods. "Me too. But you gotta understand, Daddy made his peace. I'm not sure when. He was still lost after... after the barn. Maybe it was when Beth tried to, _almost_ killed herself." Her breath is shaky just mentioning it, and he's not sure if it's because it's hard to speak Beth's name for him, too, or because the thought of Beth gone takes her breath from her, too. "When everyone was sick, and you guys went to the vet school. Daddy said you're gonna die anyway. All you got now is the _why_, the _how_."

She's quiet for a long while, and he doesn't know what to say, just chews the inside of his lips and cheeks raw. She starts again, surprising him this time. "I never knew my grampa. Daddy said he was a mean old drunk. Said some men never earn the love of their children. I'd heard him talking to Beth's mama once. Talking about razor straps. I think that's why Daddy didn't mind Merle so much, and loved you. I wonder sometimes if he'd seen himself in you."

He clears his throat. He shoves the maps he'd forgotten in his hands into the pocket of his jacket.

He has to strain to hear the confession when she says, "I thought if I found Glenn everything would just... be okay. I should have-"

"No." He's shocked at the vehemence in his own voice. He's shocked that he finds himself walking closer to her, to Beth's big sister. He leans enough to catch her eyes- pointed to the ground- and forces eye contact. "We'll find her."

Maggie swallows, he can see her throat working past the emotion in her throat. She nods again. "I just. You should know. Even if- if we don't find her, you're a part of our family. Not just... the prison family. The Greene family, too."

When she turns, and goes to Glenn, slipping into his arms like he was her anchor, Daryl is glad. He wouldn't be able to talk anymore anyway.


	9. Plan

He lays the maps down on the ground, sets rocks in the corner, and they all huddle around. They try to gain their bearings, between the bus terminal they're assuming is where they just were, and where the prison was. Daryl drags his finger over the thick green blotches, the woods, trying to find a cemetery marking. The funeral home. Maggie, Sasha and Bob argue about where they think the bus was stopped. They think they find the tunnel where they finally met Glenn and the rest of them.

Daryl finds the crossroads, he thinks. Road, road, train tracks. It's not far from a cemetery marker. He taps the map. "This is where I met up with Joe and them."

He let's his hand fall away. He sits back on his heels. They haven't pushed, haven't demanded answers, and he's thankful for that. He can't look up, especially not to Maggie or Rick, when he says, "Someone took her in a car. That's where I lost the car."

"A car, shit, could be anywhere now. And how long's it been? What are the honest chances-" But Rick cuts Abraham off with a look. Daryl feels his hands clench, doesn't do it by thought, and he tries to relax them, telling himself it would be ok, cause at least he'd know one way or the other.

"We stayed in a funeral home. It was someone else's hide out. Everything was clean. Fresh food. Peanut butter. Diet soda. Good stuff. The car had a cross painted on the back." Daryl finishes. "I don't think they were gonna go far."

Daryl feels like it takes them far too long to decide on a plan of action, he's antsy, and he feels worse by far- being around them, the shared glances that he has no partner for, it makes him long for something he'd never wanted in the first place. He'd tried so hard, edging years closer to 40, to keep people away. Now he just wants to shut his trap and get a move on.

They argue about splitting up because it'd be faster- Abe's idea- and Maggie is the one to point out that their group is used to fighting together. Numbers is always how they kept things safe. Daryl couldn't help listening to all the input, thinking of Sophia, thinking of the half-assed searches they'd tried to put together.

Eventually, Rick decides they should follow the road the car was on. They fold the maps back up.

It only takes them two days to get back to where he'd been. He's glad they weren't going all the way back, to the funeral home. He doesn't want to share that place. He doesn't want to see it again, either, even though he thinks about her bag, forgotten on the road.


	10. Wind

When it happens, it's almost anticlimactic.

He can feel the breath evacuate his lungs in a rush, he has to lean against the wall of the building. His eyes meet Rick's, across the doorway between them.

For some reason, he'd always thought it'd be gun's blazin'. Not so quiet. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears, inside his own head.

It was Carl that had nudged Michonne this morning, said loud enough for the rest to hear, "This is where we were. Before Terminus."

A sprawl of suburb. They'd stopped briefly, assigning tasks, divvying weapons. Daryl finds prison-folk at his back, Rick and Carl and Michonne and Maggie and Glenn, into their old formation, ready. There's something in the way Sasha and Bob's eyes meet, their grips tighten on handles of weapons. All of them, he sees it, they aren't who they were at the prison. At the prison, they were still afraid. New to this. Unsure. Faltering, hesitating. No longer. Now they believe in themselves. He sees it. They are hunters now. Not prey.

There's something in his chest, it may be what other people called _pride_. He's never been too good with the range of emotions thing.

For some reason, he has a flashback: not as tangible as Merle in those woods, when he had an arrow in his side and a cliff to climb. But it's there. Beth's eyes, when they were in that trunk. That night had felt like fucking forever, neither slept, her breathing never evened out. It seemed so loud, her rasping breaths, even with the groaning and slapping of the walkers. He focused everything- knowing the need for this hiding spot, for the close proximity, for being inside her personal bubble and his discomfort despite the knowing, trying not to feel her body shaking against the length of his leg and body- he put all of it into aiming his crossbow, breathing slow, waiting for the moment the walkers pulled the trunk open finally.

Beth's eyes had been afraid then. A rabbit, a lamb to the slaughter. And he'd known, in that moment, he'd never be able to keep her safe. Not forever. Not for long.

He'd seen the change in her eyes happen, over their time together. Beth had hunter eyes now, as much as that farmer's daughter with the blue eyes could ever have them. He doesn't know quite when it happened to the rest of them.

He shakes himself of this. They begin to clear the town.

It isn't until they've come upon the Southern Presbyterian Church that the world seems to fall apart.

The sign says, "GOD HAS LEFT GO AWAY."

The small hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

The town had been fairly quiet. Houses had been ransacked. Carl pointed out the places they'd already been. They had relaxed, enough not to be sneaking around corners, holding their voices. The church had double doors on the main building, for the congregation, and attached, a regular old home, for the minister or whatever. Daryl'd never been a godly man.

He and Rick take point, on each side of the double doors, big wooden things that swing inward. That's when it happens. He hears it. It knocks him backward. His eyes, his eyes must look frightening, the look on his face must be worrying, because Rick's eyes turn almost frantic. But Rick heard it, too, the shouted, "Goddamnit, Gabriel, _let me go_!"

There's more, he's listening to her voice because he can't believe it, he can't move, because he's not breathing, he can't catch his breath, she's knocked it out of him again. He thinks, wildly, that she'll probably get him killed one day, a big fucking distraction. While Rick's suddenly levering to his feet, he hears, "I know what I saw! It's my family! They won't hurt us!" And another voice, a male voice he can't quite make out, the words are too hushed. Rick lunges foot first for the door, not being smart about this at all. As the door swings inward, his head turns of its own volition. His body's no longer fully connected to his brain, just in that split second his breath is wiped clean from his lungs.

Then there she is, her little joke of a fist going straight and true into the nose of the guy who'd had his hand wrapped around her wrist. The asshole's hands drop her, to spring to his face, and she's yanking her arm and turning, she's sprinting, she barely takes a moment to double-check, to be sure, before launching herself bodily to Rick.

The first full gasp of air he finally drags into his body is painful.


	11. Harmless

One of Rick's hands cradles the back of Beth's head, and he's holding her while she cries, but he never looks away from Daryl. There must be something, Daryl thinks, he must look fucking crazy. Rick hasn't really looked at him like that since he crawled out of the woods on the farm, wearing ears, a hole in his gut, barely upright.

It's strange, he just feels like laughing at the absurdity. Instead, he pushes himself up and Rick is staring at him, but Daryl's already pulling his crossbow up, aiming, he is suddenly on fire. He is enraged. He thinks of touching the soft inside of her bicep. He thinks of this bastard's hand on her wrist, trying to drag her further inside the church, further away from him.

He thinks of one of the times his dad was off on a bender, and Merle'd been gone to juvie or a friend's house or somethin', and in boredom he'd read through the fucking dictionary. The whole fucking thing. He knows he's lost thousands of those words, but he thinks now of all the synonyms for being fucking pissed. He stands above where the guy- _Gabriel_, she'd said- has landed on his ass on the floor, scooting back toward the aisle between pews. He thinks maybe Rick called his name, but his ears are fuzzy with it, with this rage, anger. He's livid. He is seething. He is kneeling close, pressing the point of his arrow to his forehead. The skin is sweating, his eyes are terrified, pleading, but Daryl thinks of running after that goddamned car. He thinks of the fear.

He thinks of that man's hands on _his_, their Beth.

He had expected this to go down so much more differently. When he indulged in silly girlish fantasies, worst moments, the hardest, where he _hoped_, he'd thought they'd come upon the car. And they'd sneak in, the guns would blaze, it would be a massacre, like all the encounters with The Governor. He thought it'd be a bit more like that, if he truly ended up being a hero, saving her.

He'd thought he'd have plenty of reason, plenty of proof, to be judge, jury and executioner to the person that took Beth from him at that moment. He's holding his hands up, trying to slink, to become small. There's blood on his lips from where Beth popped him one, bloodied his nose to get to them.

Instead, suddenly, Beth's shoutin' his name right in his ear, she's hangin' off his arm, trying to drag it down, to point the crossbow away. She's yelling somethin' about how he's no harm, she's begging him to give this man his life back, _Daryl, he can't even kill a walker!_ It's that slight, so very slight he could have missed it, the edge of irritation in her voice, a roll of her eyes, as if he'd just stuck his dirty fingers in a jar of jelly again. It's so mundane, such an unexpected reaction, she's _exasperated_ with him, he's- he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing until he's flinched away from her, turned his back to her- he's trying to get himself under control, he feels like a fucking animal, he feels like he did when he learned Merle was handcuffed to a fucking roof.

He's fit to be fuckin' tied. He tosses his crossbow as hard as he can against the pews.

He wants to kill this man. He understands exactly what Rick meant when he said it _was _him, ripping Joe's neck straight apart. Gutting a man. The things you do for your family. For your people. Your tribe.

He paces twice but he can't stand the walls around him, and he can't look at her because she'll see the fuckin' animal, and she's barely even real yet, he's not even, it was just _too easy _and Daryl knew, if there was one thing he'd always been able to count on, it was that if it seemed too good to be true, it fucking was and you'd best at least try to have some line of defense. He wonders if he's dreaming. He has to fucking- go.

He hears Beth, confused, say, "Daryl?"

He stomps out the doors, into the sun. He rifles in all his pockets, dropping things, he finally pulls out the crushed, mostly empty pack of smokes he'd found in the dash of a car down the street in his shirt pocket. Maggie's running the opposite direction, she looks torn for a minute when she sees him, sees what he looks like, but she doesn't have time to apologize, no time to even feel bad right now because she's seen Beth, heard her voice, too.

He wonders if maybe he's going crazy like Rick did. Seeing phantoms.

Glenn's coming to meet him, trying to intervene, to put a hand on his arm, but he just can't take it yet. He's too angry. He'll snap and snarl at them all. He doesn't want to do that, he doesn't want to be that.

He thrashes through the trees behind a house, crashing, uncaring, swiping at branches and kicking at the dead leaves and pine needles.

* * *

A/N: Okay, guys. This is my first foray into fanfic, truly. (If I think about it, that means I've lurked in fandoms for over a decade, ugh.) I'd like thoughts and opinions. In character? Seem realistic? Please tell me.


	12. Stare

They were staying in the church for the night. He could see the candlelight, faint though it was, through the windows, stained glass and clear panes alike. He's not sure how far he went, before he went to his knees. He's not sure how much longer he sat hunched like that, lost, until he heard the stirrings of walkers coming closer. There'd been four of them, probably people that had lived in this town, gone to that church on Sunday, pretendin' to be sorry. Now they wandered aimlessly.

He took them each out, putting his knife through the soft spot under their chins, through eye sockets, the back of their neck.

He's tired and hungry by the time he's turned around. Empty, hollow. Scared.

_You don't get to treat me like crap just because you're_ afraid_!_

He lurks. He slides around in the darkness, finds a window to look through. They're in the house, a living room. They are seated around like a fucking kumbaya campfire. He just... he needs a moment when no one else can see, on his own, to come to terms with this.

It doesn't feel real. And a part of him, larger than he'd like to admit, is worried that it was just his imagination. He's worried somehow this will be taken from him. That he'll wake from this.

It takes him several hard, steadying breaths to have to balls to move his eyes around the room. He sees the back of Tara, Rosita, Abe's broad shoulders block a lot of the view. They're eating from cans, talking quietly. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the bright blonde of her hair, swept over her shoulder. She's leaning into Maggie, but her hands are in her lap. He looks over the line of her jaw, her head is tilted down, but she's talking.

He tries, then, when that becomes too hard, to take her in, in pieces. For a while he stares at her hands, picking at her cuticles. Her knees, pressed together on the floor, they look bony even from here. He thinks maybe she's lost weight but it's hard to tell under all her clothes. He imagines she has.

Her elbows. Her shoulders.

He watches as she stands to throw away some empty cans, and her movements are stilted. She smiles soft at something Maggie says, but it doesn't reach her eyes. The line of her back. Once he realizes he's been looking at all of her, and he hasn't flinched away, once it feels more comfortable and like he won't make a big fool of himself in front of the others, he turns.

She seemed tired. Sad.

He dragged himself up the three steps on the porch. He let his knees go, collapsed against the wall of the house. His crossbow is sitting diagonal, waiting for him. He wonders who brought it over, took care of it.

He's not ready to go in yet, but Rick strolls out, his gun out. Checking the sound of heavy tread. When he sees Daryl, he puts the hand gun away, in his holster.

Daryl can't do much more than glance toward his direction. Then back down to his boots.

Rick asks, "All right?"

"Mm. 'M here."

Rick nods. Rubs his hand over his face. "You should come eat."

"I will in a while."

"She's alive, Daryl."

"Just... just ain't ready yet, ok. I'll take first watch."

"Ok, brother." He stands with him for a few moments before slapping a palm on his shoulder and heading back in. He must not get very far, because Daryl can hear them both clearly when she asks Rick, "Is he back?"

Her voice is strained. Daryl leans his head back. He closes his eyes. The southern lilt to her voice, it's so welcome it hurts.

"Yeah." There's a pause. Daryl wonders what he'd observe between the two of them if he looked. Then Rick says, "Beth, everything'll be ok."


	13. Blame

He dreams, oddly, of his mother. She smells of cigarette smoke, but her face- it's been so long, he's not sure what it looked like. Instead, her face looks like Patricia, back from the farm. And all she keeps saying is the echo of Len, in her softer accent. _Was it one of the little'uns? Cause they don't last long out here._

He wakes hard, like dragging himself out of thick mud, with his hands clenched into fists and a crick in his neck. He's slept sitting up, on the porch. He focuses on unlocking his cramped fingers, one by one.

There's been a small triangle of cans set next to him, peaches, chickpeas, unflavored and unsweetened applesauce. Joy.

Glenn's sitting on the rail of the porch, legs outstretched, a pitchfork across his lap. He's looking at Daryl, and it's not a way he'd like to wake up, to shake off the remnants of that fucked up dream and the anger it left behind. He just doesn't know what to say. Instead of eating, he lights one of the precious cigarettes, hopes it'll somehow settle his stomach. Glenn's still watching him.

Halfway done the smoke, he breaks. He grumbles, "What?"

Glenn sorta shrugs. "I'm just on watch, man."

Daryl grunts, but he suspects better. The food on the floor speaks of a Greene sister, not Glenn.

When Glenn starts talking, it's different. It's not... it's not like he used to be. It was like Hershel was coming out of his mouth. Daryl thinks suddenly of how left-behind that man is, imprinted on each of them, carried with them. At least there was that. "You weren't really there after... after the Governor took me and Maggie. You were with Merle for a while. I was... going to kill that man. I was going to take from him to give back to Maggie."

Daryl smokes his cigarette, chews on his thumbnail and his lip. He figured Glenn'd keep going, whether he said anything or not. He figured he knew well enough by now, it weren't that he didn't care. He just didn't know how. How any of this worked.

"But it, it wouldn't really give her back what he took. And it just made her feel like I was blamin' her. For what happened. It wasn't her fault. Took a while to come to terms that it wasn't my fault either."

Daryl grunts again. This speaks to heavy-handed Maggie. He thought- he was pretty sure that Beth understood his... privacy. Maggie wasn't so... quiet and insidious, like smoke in his lungs- instead, she was the hammer. The steel.

He flicks the butt of the cigarette over the porch rail, into the yard. Glenn shrugs. "Beth says this Gabriel guy, he isn't right in the head. Not like the Governor, just a guy who can't come back."

Finally, Daryl says, "Don't mean I ain't gonna kill him."


	14. Squirrel

It's Rick that makes the comment, says the thing most everyone was thinking. "Hate to see another winter on the road."

Daryl'd been keeping busy. Staying away from the church. He set traps a ways away. He got some squirrels. He set up noise fences. Didn't really matter how long they'd be here, he just needed something to do.

He went back through the closest houses, through attics and basements, taking what looked good. Breaking useless junk because sometimes the shattering sound helped.

He made himself a lean-to outside, not far from the porch, close enough to see through the windows of the house, far enough away to have a small fire. And to watch for walkers before they even get close. He would almost welcome some walkers, a distraction.

Most of the prisonfolk, Sasha, Maggie, Rick and Glenn, had come to hover over his fire while the squirrel was cooking.

Beth is come from the porch, approaching like she's unsure of her welcome, when Rick says the bit about winter. There is a chill in the air. He wasn't doing anything without his flannels and leather. Even Beth was wrapped up in layers, and he could see her breath. It's starting to darken outside.

He's thankful he stayed busy enough to get through the day.

It's the first time he's been within six feet of Beth. He can't meet her eye. He keeps watch on the squirrel while she sets herself down next to Maggie. It is cold, and it's gonna get colder. Hunting's gonna get harder, again. People would get meaner. More desperate. He wasn't exactly over the moon about this DC trip, heading further North, with places full of even more people, when resources would be sparse and the weather would only get more vicious.

(Sometimes, he wonders if the weather is changing now that there aren't so many people in the world. Now that there were millions of cars running and heaters, coal and nuclear plants. Not that he ever liked it, but some days he misses the news. Nowadays, you didn't know what was happening ten feet away from you if the woods or fog was thick. Sometimes, he thinks about Japan, or Spain, England. What was happening out there? But those were idle thoughts, for places like the prison, all false security. On the road, there would hardly be time for those.)

Yeah, maybe the cold would slow down the walkers. Maybe. But that didn't outweigh all the other risks.

Seems like everyone else was thinkin' it, too, remembering what it was like, before they all found the prison. There's a silence, while the squirrel sizzles and he tries to blind himself in the fire. The spell is broken for the rest of them when Beth tells Rick that Carl's sleeping. Then, she pipes up, and says to Daryl, "Dinner almost done? Didn't think I'd ever look forward to squirrel."

For a moment, a long moment of struggle, he is suddenly irritated with her. Like he was before, when she wanted a drink. Or to play that juvenile drinking game. Like a damned thing weren't wrong and things hadn't gotten all fucked up, and he hadn't failed all the way around.

He knows, if he thinks reasonably, she's just trying. She's trying.

But he's too twisted up about too many things now. He'd thought it'd be different. He hadn't thought about any of these things, these particular variables. It had seemed pretty black and fuckin' white right up until that moment. He didn't think that she wouldn't want him to kill the man that took her from him. Or how things would be between them when everyone else was there, and there was at least a dozen things left unsaid between them since the night she was taken, and for fuck's sake, he's still too fucked in the head to even make eye contact with her.

By the time he's handing out pulled-apart scraps of meat, he realizes someone's asked her about where she's been all this time, what happened, and he's...

He's not ready to hear it. He's not sure if it's his mom's voice or Len's, whispering, _I'll bet this bitch got you all messed up. Was it one of the little'uns? _and he feels his stomach roll with the ideas of all the things a man could do to a girl. A woman.

He nudges Maggie with his elbow, then shoves his pitiful excuse for a dinner into her limp hand. When she locks confused eyes with his, he only shoots his own hard toward Beth, then back to Maggie. She'll get it.

If she doesn't, oh well, because he's pushing himself up and turning into the dark again. Back into the trees. This time, he doesn't flail through the bush, he doesn't make a racket. He just needs to be back where it's quiet, for a time, to deal with the shit swirling in his head.


	15. Junkyard Dog

He doesn't go far, doesn't have to. They were used to speaking softly, and carrying big sticks, this group. Twenty long paces, thirty, and it's the kind of silence that isn't dangerous, too empty or too full, and nearly pitch dark.

The problem is, he thinks, legs slung over a log, digging his knife into the soft wood, is that he can't put that thought out of his head now.

It's not like they all didn't know, what could happen to women out here. He knew better than most, since before the world _really_ went to shit. Watchin' his mama and dad. Sometimes, when he was angrier, he used to think that maybe being burnt down was probably the best out for his mom. Then Merle, he was no peach to the ladies. He toed the line.

But Beth had always been... insulated. Protected. At the farm, hell, he'd barely seen her, really. Wasn't till on the road that winter, brushing her up on her gun skills, finding her a machete, watching her stuff cans in bags while scouting the horizon (lookin' like an owl with those big eyes with the bite of fear in them), holding hands with Lori at night sometimes, watching the way she'd pick mighty slow at whatever they had to eat, like trying to prolong the experience of eating once a day. Sometimes, slipping a piece to Carl instead of putting it in her own gut. That was when he'd actually noticed her there, as a family member. As someone to protect, like Sophia had been and Carl and the baby on the way.

At the prison, she stayed in the walls. She could handle her own, enough to work the fences, to hold the guns, to be trusted. But mainly, she walked the halls, rocking Judith, singin'. Still, so safe. Still a child.

And when it'd been just them, he'd never... never even truly considered it. He just... wanted to touch her hand again, feel her skin, listen to her talk, for fuck's sake.

Most men weren't like him. He stabs and grinds the knife particularly hard into the log, digging a trench into the heart of it. Now that the thought, bad men and small girls with breakable bones and bruisable skin and souls, rape and violence, sex and Beth, it's in his head now and he'd feel so much better if he could just put a fist into Father Gabriel's throat or make his thoughts about Beth pure again, clean again, like they were at the funeral home.

The things Gabriel could have done to her won't stop gnawing at him, and neither would the past.

He hears her coming long before she even gets there. He knows her tread. He listened to it in silence for weeks. She was like a doe in the woods, sometimes moving with so much grace it takes your breath from you, sometimes all knees and jerks and false starts. He knows he's not ready for this, for whatever sort of _this_ it winds up being, the first time they're alone, with only each other to look at. He feels a strange feeling, like terror, clench his stomach.

But then she flicks aside a branch, dead leaves still clinging to it, and she spots him, and even he ain't dick enough to tell her to go away, to leave him alone. Doesn't mean his fist doesn't tighten on the knife handle, making the rougher parts bite into skin. Doesn't mean he don't start after the log again, as if he's gonna saw the damn thing in half with just a bowie knife.

"Hey," she says, but not casual, not like at the fire. She ain't trying to hide her apprehension now, her confusion. He hears it all without having to look at her.

He makes some sort of noncommittal noise, focusing on the wood under his hands and blade and ass. Seemed safer than staring straight at the goddamned sun. Especially when he was still so fucking mad, at this Father Gabriel, at Joe and Merle, at his mother and his dreams, but mostly at himself.

He listens to her adjust her feet, the leaves crackling underneath her cowboy boots. More worn for the wear than they'd been when he was with her. She'd need new boots before this winter hit.

"What do you want?" He doesn't really mean to be a dick, but it just comes out in his discomfort. In his roiling frustration. He knows he can't avoid her forever. He doesn't think Rick will let him keep his tent at the edge of the group like he'd done at the farm. Suddenly he thinks of Maggie and Glenn, too, and realizes they'd not let him retreat either. Neither would Beth, that's why she was fucking out in the woods here, trying to draw him back.

He wasn't ready to come back.

"You mad at me, then?" She doesn't quite sound piqued, or hurt, but some weird middle ground.

He just throws her a look, a _Don't be fucking stupid_ one. He can't maintain it for long even when he looks wide over her right shoulder and not directly at her.

He swears he can almost _hear_ her spine stiffen, in the moments that follow. It's one of the silences he hates, too full, much too full. Her voice doesn't even shake this time, maybe it's because she's not drunk on her first moonshine, when she demands, "Daryl. Look at me."

He does actually try. His body's reaction is to follow her command, his head turns, but his hair's- thankfully- in his eyes. His eyebrows raise up, but his eyes can't. He can't get much farther than her kneecaps before his gaze jumps away again. He lurches up in frustration, his knife left in the gouge he'd made. He takes a couple steps, he wants to roll his shoulders and try to loosen them, but it feels like he'd be giving something away, saying too much.

Her voice is whisper quiet, but it seems just as loud as when they were screamin' at each other. "I made it," she says, hushed, strong. Echoing that fight, like she could read his mind. But instead, she continues, "Don't you wanna know how?"

"No." He feels himself lose a little bit of his control. Doesn't want to hear the words coming out of her mouth. Doesn't want to think of the look on Carl's face, after that fucker with Joe, doesn't ever want to see it on Beth's face. It would be his fault. "Not if you're expectin' me to sit around a campfire and sing a fuckin' song with him."

She crosses her arms, but he can't tell if she's trying to protect herself from the venom that's inadvertently in his tone, or if she's just upset. He can't tell. He feels like he's slipping, like he's turnin' into the man she told him he couldn't be anymore, and he wishes he could just beat some walkers into a pile of blood and rotted brain and feel better. It won't make any of this any better, or else yesterday he woulda been damn near chipper when he'd finally returned.

The fact that he can't rely on his only methods for as long as he can remember has him spinning to face her, giving the eye contact she'd wanted in the first place. But this time it comes with a pointed finger, and livid hiss, "If he put his hands on you, even once-"

"I woulda killed him." It cuts him off, and takes him aback, because for a second she has a hunter's look in her eye, but she's talking in that girlish voice of hers, the kind that belonged in school cafeterias and the church social. She shakes her head, like she sees she's said something, something that makes him react. She tries to perk up, she has something like a smile on her face, but not quite. Like she's trying to convince him that the way she'd said that didn't feel like a loss of something, somehow. Like it ain't no big deal. "But I didn't have to. He's- he ain't like us. He ain't a survivor, Daryl. I just-"

"Told ya I didn't wanna hear-"

"I thought of you. What you taught me. Used it. Hid more than you would," her smile is slight. "But I made it. Did what I had to."

He doesn't know what to say, or to do. He's not sure what he's thinking, neither, and so he just stands there. His hands down by his side. Staring at his boots. Breathing a little heavy.

Eventually, she turns to go with a whispered, "Fine," and he waits. He already knows he's going to follow her, just not so close. Not on her heels, like the junkyard dog he feels like, aching for any bit of kindness showed to him. It feels like he'd be admitting to something.


	16. Chances

He wakes early morning, before the sky has even started to lighten, a sound.

He flinches upward, hand going immediately to the crossbow next to him, but he realizes it's only a sob, soft, the hitching of breath. On the steps, she's hunched over, leaning her face into her palms.

"Beth," his voice is rough with sleep, he tries to clear his throat. "Everyone ok?"

She nods her head, but now she won't meet his eyes. She looks away, she wipes at the tears on her face. She clearly hadn't intended on getting caught out. As he fully sits, he takes in what he can of her. The fire's burned low, barely smoking in the cold air. She's wrapped in a woolen blanket, on the stairs, and breathing through her mouth, trying to regulate it.

He pulls himself up. He feels old. His left knee cracks, loud in the sleep-quiet of night. So are her sniffles. He grabs some of the dry wood he'd collected earlier, crouches down to coax the bits of coal into flame again. He listens, too, for sounds of walkers, dragging, groaning. Creaks of the house. Beth's short inhales. When the flames catch, start eating at the kindling, get engorged, he sits back on his ass, leans his elbow on his knee. Looks over to her.

It still bothers him when she cries.

"Get over here. You're cold." He's gruff, but she shouldn't have any allusions that he's ever been so good with the words. Unless it was cussing. Merle had taught him how to be quite creative there.

She's unsteady when she finally stands, her hands holding the blanket around her shoulders. She won't look at him, but she steps over. She leaves a good foot between them when she finally settles on the ground. He doesn't know how to break this ice, his own bullshit. He doesn't know how to reach out.

For once, he's glad for the Greene x-ray vision. Glad when she does it for him. Her voice is rough, rougher than he's ever heard it, the words scratching her throat on the way out: "It was really hard."

He nods, slowly, but he feels crushed under a ton of rock. His guilt is heavy enough to pull his shoulders down. "I shoulda done something different. I've thought about it. All the ways I coulda-"

"That's not what I meant. I was so- so scared. Scared I'd never see you again." She's not too scared now to meet his eyes, even with her cheeks reddening, her damned eyes so big and blue and vulnerable. So vulnerable sometimes that he wishes he could warn her, tell her to guard that close, because people would use it to kill you. "It was hard to keep the faith."

He understands.

When he'd first seen Beth Greene, on that farm, her and her sister, he'd pegged them immediately. Maggie, clearly the farmer's daughter with the wild streak, the one that would ride mechanical bulls and drink you under the table. He'd not been much inclined then, but she was the type of girl that woulda had a drink with him at the bar some night without much judgement. But Beth- blonde hair, blue eyes, homegrown teenaged boyfriend and an over-protective father... he'd known exactly where he stood. The potential woman she would be, and the girl she was, would never have had a damn thing to do with him. Would avert her eyes if they crossed paths in public.

It's so strange, he thinks, that he'd find a mirror in her, sometimes. He tries not to be bitter that if it weren't for the zombie apocalypse, he wouldn't be sitting next to her. Ever.

She's looked away again, in his silence, watching the fire like she did that house when all the liquor went up, except this time her eyes are bloodshot from crying, not moonshine.

It feels like he's struggling when he starts to lift his hand, presses his fingertips into her bicep- over the blanket, through her sweaters, but it doesn't matter. At least he can feel her muscle jump under all the fabric. At least they're both alive.


	17. ConfrontationConfirmation

After he'd woken that morning, and the sky had lightened, he'd finally gone into the house for the first time. He'd stepped lightly, leaving a sleeping Beth curled up against a tree near the fire, and toed through the house, his crossbow in his hand.

He'd found Rick, and nudged him awake. "Thermometer on the door this mornin' said 27."

"Winter."

"Mhm. Gettin' too cold for places like this, ain't prepared. Ain't heated. Ain't protected."

"I'll talk to them."

Daryl gives a nod, and begins to leave, having said what needed to be said. What needed to be done to keep them safe, Beth too. It's going to be too cold for people like Beth and Carl, small and more likely to get sick. But Rick, he pulls himself up off the floor and follows behind, heading towards the kitchen toward the back door.

"You-" Rick's just started speaking when the turn through the doorway, and it's the Father, piddling around in the kitchen like he's making his morning tea. Daryl can't keep himself from adjusting his grip on the crossbow, pushing his molars together hard.

The man spins at their voices, and sets his cup down with little grace.

"Daryl-" Rick begins again, putting a hand to his arm, but the man interrupts this time.

"You're- you're him?"

Daryl's got nothing to say.

But the thing is, Daryl's been thinking about it all mornin'. Ever since Beth drifted off, listing to the side, lulled by the heat from the fire. In the hush of the early morning, the sun peaking bright and grey and desolate, he'd had a lot of time to think about it. The guy's about to say something, but Daryl changes his mind, decides there's something he's gotta know first. "Did you hear me?"

"Huh?" The man has a hard time getting just that sound out.

"Did you hear me. I followed you for miles. Did you hear me hollerin'?"

He thinks of twelve different ways he could kill him, right now, without even making much noise. Without waking most the house. He sees it in his eyes before he can speak. He sees it.

The confirmation.

Two steps forward, Rick's hand on his arm tightening, it's fine though, he ain't gonna kill him. Ain't gonna even touch him. "Don't give me a reason. I won't stop next time."

But this time, the man responds, almost without a snag, "Not even for her?"

"Just stay outta my way."


	18. Dig

He is more awkward now than he'd been since he hit puberty.

At least at the prison, he'd felt none of this current, an electric one, making him twitch every fucking time she was in his periphery. Now, he finds himself reaching toward her like he would have when they were alone together, to hold her arm, or bump her shoulder, then immediately pulling away, too fast, like an ass. He keeps his distance, but catches himself staring at her too long, over the fire, from across a room that always feels too small, while she's sleeping. He knows others must of caught him, too, just didn't say nothin'. Instead of feeling like they're allowing him some sort of dignity, by not saying anything or making a deal of it, he just feels anxious. Like they're just too afraid to give him the shit he clearly deserves.

It's been a little over a week. They've moved from place to place, slowly, just barely inching northward while Rick argues with Abraham about plans and what's going to happen and what needs to happen and all that horseshit.

He focuses on clearing houses. On scouting. On collecting. On keeping everyone safe. On destroying or vandalizing every sign for Terminus they come across. He's happy not to be such a leader again. Happy he can focus on filling bellies and killing walkers. These are the things he knows.

These things keep him from looking at Gabriel, or Beth. Keep him busy and distant, without being a jackass. None of it makes him feel better, only more tense, only more like there's something building, like a storm.

They don't avoid each other, but she gives him space, and he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing.

He's at a loss when he overhears an argument between Beth and the Father, in the dark in a strange house. The Father was twittering, worrying. Saying it was better when they were alone, safer. People were dangerous. It makes Daryl's jaw sore with the irony.

Then Beth's voice, "It's your choice. These are my family. I know what _I'm _doing. No one will force you to stay. No one will hurt you. But I'm never leaving them again." She sounds like a edge of a sword when she says, "Not ever."

But he doesn't want to hear her convince him to stay.

He's at a loss when, two days later, Father Gabriel is bitten trying to get Tara, with her still aching knee, away from a walker.

Beth is the one to take care of him, warning off Rick with such a sad, resolute look that it strikes Daryl in the fucking gut.

He wants to, but he can't look away when she lurches her knife into the softness under his chin.

When she pulls the knife loose, it seems her whole tiny body hunches, all vertebrae and the shakes. She rests her hands in the dirt, fingers still gripped around the knife, leaning, sucking in air. When she stumbles from her knees, upright, she doesn't face them until she's wiped the blood on the blade onto her jeans.

It bothers him that when she finally does come around, she goes to Rick, she asks him if he'll help her bury him. She isn't crying. She doesn't.

He winds up stalking off, the inside of his skin feeling itchy. He tries to distract himself. Setting up perimeters, clearing sheds, building a fire in the backyard of this house they've decided to stay at for now. He watches out of the corner of his eye as Rick and Beth work on the grave; she's picked a spot under a large tree, on the edge of what used to be the lawn. It bothers him enough that he leaves Maggie and Sasha in charge of skinning and cooking, and gives Rick a slap on the shoulder, gesturing for his shovel.

Rick eyes him for a moment, long enough for Daryl to nod, and then the shovel is his and Rick's off to find Carl or Michonne. Beth stops her digging to wipe at the sweat on her brow, to look over at Daryl. He can tell, she is thinking, she's trying to figure something out. She's just furrowing her brow at him, making him uncomfortable. Feelin' like she's trying to see right through him again.

So he goes for the dirt. He could pretend he was just giving Rick a break, but even he knows that's not it.

The thing is, he thinks, that there's just too much between them now and they don't know how to talk about it. At least, he don't. Father Gabriel, and her being taken. What happened while they were separated, and how they've changed. All the other eyes in the group, suddenly on them, it feels like. The conversation they'd never been able to finish, and what it meant for them.

He can't suss out his feelings, can't find their common ground again, and bleakly, he thinks it was easier when they were alone. She would have come to him, because there was no one else. And he could have dug for her, and touched her arm, and given what little he could. Now, he's just flustered, frustrated, unable.

But he can dig. And he does, until Beth clears her throat with his name. When she says, "It's big enough."

It is. He'll be deep enough that the walkers won't smell him, tear him back up, eat him.

He shoves the spade into the ground, leans on it, while she pulls herself from the hole and gets her feet under her. She wipes dirt off her hands, rubs her sleeve over her cheeks. She says, "You didn't have to help."

Daryl squints up at her, trying to figure out how she could still sound like little Beth from the prison even with how different she is now. Changed.

When she finally stops fiddling with her dirty hands and clothes, when she looks up to realize he's been starin' at her, he won't let her drop the eye contact now. Like in that house, when he held it there, that gaze of hers.

He feels frustration, over so many things, but he's surprised when the words don't come out mean: "Come to _me _for this. Understand?"

He can't be sure she does, but she's still staring, like she did when she said _Oh_ at that old table in the funeral home. Her face doesn't go slack this time, with surprise and revelation, but she understands something, that much he can tell from the look on her face.

She eventually nods.

She tells him, "Ok."


	19. No Rest

He ignores Rick and Abraham.

Well, he does his damnedest. Even Rosita and Eugene seem ambiguous in this back-and-forth, neither seeming too keen on splitting up, or a long, hard winter. The prison group, they wait. They wait for Rick, and his decision, for the most part.

Not Daryl. He's been too busy ignorin' them and searching high and low for atlases and maps. Flipping quickly through books on Georgia landmarks, or local architecture, he feels like he hit the jackpot when he finds a topographical map. He figures whatever way Rick decides, Daryl's gonna be prepared for holing up for winter close by. Good to have a plan.

Especially when he notices Beth blowing breath into her hands much too frequently, plumes of steam coming from everyone's mouths. He thinks about how bad it's gonna be when it starts to spit snow here and there. Thinks about all the cold weather gear they're going to need, how much of it will be easy to find. While they were in the prison, a lot of the world was getting picked over by stragglers and survivors.

In the middle of the night, when he's on watch, he finds it the hardest. Sometimes, he'll pace quiet through every room in whatever shelter they'd found, just looking over them all. Just being cautious, safe. When he thinks of Beth shivering, curled up against Sasha or back-to-back with Carl on the floor, trying to keep warm while the sun's down, he wishes hard for the prison. Everything was so much _easier_ there. Starvation and hypothermia weren't the biggest concerns.

He tries to ignore those thoughts, too, because they didn't do anything for them now. Instead, he looked for forts, schools maybe, small prisons. If they had more people, he'd head them towards one of those gated communities he'd never have been allowed in Before Walkers. But, he thinks, those kinds of places were closer to cities, and cities meant people and death.

His eyes are aching from trying to see the tiny prints and marks in the dark, he thinks about walking the house. He tries to lean the map closer to the fire, trying to make out what that symbol meant while the flames and shadows made it damn near impossible.

Certainly didn't help when the paper got too close and started to smoulder and brown.

He throws the map to the side with a curse, patting his pockets in search of the last cigarette he had right now.

"What're you lookin' for?"

It makes him jump, her murmur from the door. He shrugs his shoulders to loosen them. "I dunno yet." He pulls his cigarette free, pulls a stick from the fire alive with flame, to light it. "What're you doin' up?"

"Couldn't sleep." She gives a careless shrug before coming down the uneven concrete stairs, stopping on the other side of the small fire. Crossing her arms. Looking away when she speaks. "You said to come to you with..."

He so clearly sees her age in her nerves right then, and it's enough to bring a small smile to his face. When he thinks of Beth, he thinks of her wild eyes when she was yelling back at him, before he made them fill with heavy tears. He thinks of her, chirping, _Soon I won't need you at all_ or the way she'd smiled all over her face when she'd asked him what changed his mind. He hears her laugh when he picked her up and carried her into the kitchen. He doesn't remember this nervousness, this unsureness. He's not sure why it's so endearing.

He throws his hand out, telling her to go ahead and take a seat.


	20. Jack

She's silent for a while, staring into the fire while he smokes. He doesn't need to say nothin', he knows she'll come out with it when she's ready.

It's the first silence they've had together that doesn't feel charged. He's still anxious, antsy, especially since she's come to sit next to him, her shoulder awful close. But he doesn't feel like he can't look at her; it feels like before, for once.

"I was thinking about Gabriel. I know you don't want to hear about him, but he wasn't a bad guy."

Daryl sighs, because it's not that. He could be a fucking saint, and it wouldn't matter. It's all jumbled inside him, wrapped up in an angry red bow. Coulda been anyone, he thinks, and he'd still want to kill the motherfucker. Because he took her. Left Daryl runnin' after that car, desperate, so fucking desperate just to know she was alive and to have a chance to fight for her. Because he hadn't really had faith, hadn't _truly_ believed in the things Beth had said to him until he'd seen she was right. The second he'd seen Maggie- hell, the moment he knew Rick was alive- he realized she'd been right all along and he'd been the one so fucking wrong.

It's that she got lucky- and he can't forgive himself for what could have happened if it had been Joe that found her.

He pushes the toe of his boot into the dirt near the fire. "Ain't that I don't want to hear."

It's all he can manage right now. She gives him one of those looks, and he tries to hold it, to encourage her to keep going, tryin' to tell her he's here, goddamnit. He just doesn't know how. He gets shy in his inability. He swings his head back to the fire.

From the corner of her eye, he sees her turn her gaze away too.

"You remember the dog?"

He grunts. Does he remember the dog. If not for the damn dog, he never woulda gone to that door without at least a goddamned weapon.

"His name was Jack. I thought it was a boring name for a dog like him. A survivor. He had mange, he was anemic from fleas and malnutrition. Probably had heartworm, too." He's watchin' her face now, just glad to be able to listen to her, without all the rage in his head screaming at him to hurt something. He can almost pretend nothing's changed since they sat on that porch of the moonshine shack and talked. "Gabriel would try to pick all the ticks off every night.

"I kept thinkin'," she keeps going, softly, so softly, "about Rick, and the pigs... We were starvin'. Ain't as good at huntin' as you, and even if I was, he wouldn't let me. Wouldn't let me leave his sight. He thought he was savin' me. ...And I kept thinkin' about you. What you would do."

She sighs this time, readjusting her feet underneath her. "You and Rick, you do what you have to do. So that's what I did. But your squirrel tastes better than a dog with a name." Her smile is brittle when she glances up to him, and he can tell she's trying to gauge him, too. She's worried about his reaction.

All he can think is, that _is_ what he woulda done and he's proud of her, fiercely proud for her ability to do it. For her backbone. For her fire. For not givin' up. But- he wishes she'd never had to. He thinks of her skinning a pet dog. Calling it to her lap, pushing her gentle hand over the slope of its dirty head, then slitting its throat. It makes him close his eyes against it, hang his head a bit. Wishing he'd been there to do it, away from her, in the woods. And then lie to her and say he'd gotten a fawn.

She continues on, trying to change the subject, like she's ashamed. He hears it in the way she rushes forward. "He wasn't a bad guy. Wish- wish things had been different for him."

The heaviness in her voice gets to him. He may have wanted to kill the man, but they all carried the burden of putting someone down. He thinks of Sophia, he thinks of Beth's mother. He thinks of Dale and Andrea- hard memories. Merle. He tries to clear his throat. He says the same thing Rick said to him, "Ain't on you Beth. Some people- some people ain't like us."

"No, some people ain't. Once, he'd done what he had to- like Rick said that day, to the Governor, the _worst kinds of things_, to survive, and he couldn't come back from that."

"Some people can't."

"We did."

He thinks of Rick, the cop he'd met outside Atlanta, this miracle good ol' boy who'd just woken up from a coma, woken from the dead, and found his wife and kid. He thinks of the girl Beth would have been Before Walkers, a college girl, maybe a lounge singer, maybe a waitress, maybe a teacher, mother. He thinks of watching Rick struggle against Carl's coldness, his trauma. He thinks of Hershel's neck severed. He's gruff when he asks, "Did we?"

"We're alive." Her eyes are so intense, so _alive_ when she looks at him, like she's drunk on moonshine and tellin' him she'd be gone, or he'd be the last one standin', or that it'll kill you- _here_- and it makes his breath catch. "We're different, but the world is different and we're here. _We made it._"

He can only nod, and try to believe her.


	21. Denial

So. I struggled today, trying to decide if the last chapter was the end. I didn't really have any true plot prepared for this, only a nagging version of Daryl in my head. So while I am writing more, I'm not exactly sure how it's going to go. If it's just going to more back into various one-shots or if I'm going to try to figure out how to get Carol and Ty and Judith back in there (I didn't think this through at all), hell, I don't know. I just hope you keep reading. :D

* * *

The weight lifts.

Not all of it. He doesn't think he'll ever die without the burden of regrets. But some of it is gone when it feels like she doesn't blame him. They'd sat quietly for a long while, felt like hours, looking over maps and he gripes about having a smoke and she keeps giving him looks with those big eyes like she was waiting for somethin'.

He doesn't jump away when she touches him the next day, just a hand lightly on his arm while asking him if she's still allowed to practice with his crossbow.

There's something he enjoys about the look on Maggie's face when Beth hoists the bow up with her tiny arms. He can't help the slight uplifting of the corners of his mouth when Beth heads for the treeline. It's funny to see such a small girl so happy to be holding that damned thing.

Maggie waits until her sister is a good distance away before asking, "Did you two figure your stuff out?"

He gives her a glance. Goes back to preparing to leave, to go huntin'. "Don't know what you're talking about."

She cocks a brow. She nudges his arm with her elbow. "If you say so," and leaves him there.


	22. Track

It's Beth that sees it first.

Daryl's distracted. For sure this girl would kill him, because he's too busy staring at the way she moves in front of him. He don't want to, but he feels like he's fucking 13 and he's finding himself stealing glances at her shoulders, not-so-boney under all her shirts and sweaters. At the jut of her elbow. The back of her neck when she turns her head and her pony tail flops over her shoulder. He's trying to pay attention, to listen, because there's so many of them to feed now, but damned if he can. His eyes flit back to her, the way her sides twitch with every step, her hips. She seems steadier now, after some more solid meals, but still too thin.

He doesn't mean to, but he's realized he's been checking out her ass, all the shit in her back pockets. He tries to collect himself.

He just never... never thought they'd do this again. Him, trailing behind her. Her, asking questions occasionally.

He's about to call out her name, and he's not entirely sure what he wants to say, but it's something along the lines of how glad he is to have her back, or how much he missed her while she was gone, but she stage-whispers his name first. Her voice is tight.

He picks up the pace, coming up behind her back. "What?"

She toes something over with her boot, still holding the crossbow tight.

It's a torn scrap of heavy fabric, caked in what might be mud or shit. Daryl isn't sure. It's Beth that asks, "Is that a diaper?"

* * *

So I'm clearly flubbing the timeline for my own benefit because I didn't think this through before I started off on a 20 chapter fanfiction. So, not all of this will be what I think it going to show up on the TV or whatever, but I'll still try to keep it realistic and interesting.

Thank you to all reviewers, especially you guys that give super ego boosts (like asking if I'm secretly Gimple or a writer on the show), that's always pleasant!

Also, thanks to awolfcomeshome for all help and chatting. :D


	23. Return

"Look, I'm just saying, I don't want you to get your hopes too high. There could be other people with a baby out here. We don't know."

"You're right," she says, "we don't know." And that's all she'll say on the matter while they tromp their way back to camp.

They'd scouted the area, found what may have been two sets of foot prints, but he couldn't be totally sure in all the leaves, pine needles, fallen branches, roots. There was some trash around, limbs snapped off here and there. Could have followed it some, at least a lot easier than his chances had been with Sophia or Beth, but he'd made a quick executive decision to go back to Rick with this information.

Even so, when he glances up from the forest floor to Beth walking just ahead of him, saw the determined grit to her jaw, the straight of her back, he knows exactly what she's thinking. He can nearly see her chanting in that head of hers, _Judith, Judith, Judith_. Her chin is up, a resolute confidence to just the way she's holding herself and moving that strikes him funny, for some reason (struck in the gut with something like a hallucination, like a vision, but it's right in front of him, he's looking right at her: he thinks, this is the woman Beth will be, that she _is_. He sees the coltishness, the unsureness in her own body and its capabilities, washing away from her.)

It leaves him gasping, grasping for a handhold, and to catch up.

He knows Beth needs her hope, but Judith... she was just an infant. No one had seen or heard of her or the kids, but they'd found Luke's boot. He thinks of Carl telling them of her empty car seat at the burning prison.

Worse than thinking of wherever Beth had been, he'd tried not to think of Judy at all.

He grabs at her arm, just enough to pull her to a stop. "Beth."

When she twirls around to face him, her eyes make him flash back to when she'd been picking fruit for the kids, _they'll be hungry when we find them._ Decisive, just a little bit obstinate. It's this look she gets, he knows now, when she's gettin' ready to spit out something that normal, sweet little Beth Greene wouldn't say unless she were real riled. Gearin' up to fight for what she believed, what she _needed_ to believe in.

He ain't lookin' for a fight. He lets his hand slip from her arm, to her fingers. He thinks of touching her cheek, putting his big clumsy dirty palm on her face, but he hasn't got the balls. Not yet. "Just don't want ya... hurtin' more."

Her face softens. He sees it happen like magic.

Her small, dry, warm fingers curl around his, squeeze. "We'll be ok."

He chews his lip. Ducks his head. Nods. Feels like a fool for not being able to meet her eyes, feeling too overwhelmed, definitely in over his unschooled fucking head.

She drops his hand, a merciful release.

They keep on.


	24. Telling

He's taken Rick aside as soon as they come to their piddly camp they'd made in the woods, just off the road they'd been following. Daryl's trying to figure out what to say, but he's distracted, made more nervous by the way Beth's picking at her nails, at his side. Leaving it up to him, like he's got any kind of accurate emotional barometer for this kind of shit. Like he somehow knows the best way to approach this.

He gives her a quick side-eye, thinkin' she'd probably have the most insight on how to deal with things like this, but she's silent as a church mouse.

In the end, he just blurts out that they'd found a fairly fresh diaper- a day, two, three- and gave Rick the time to process it.

It seems to be the kind of news Rick had been waiting for that last week or so, arguing with Abraham, listlessly moving Northward. He can spot exactly when Rick understands what he's trying to tell him. His face does the same thing Beth's had, but instead of softening, it hardens, sharpens, becomes something else. Like when he'd told them, _This isn't a democracy anymore_, but not with the man-on-the-edge tone. Not the same as a man with too much to lose.

Now it's a man that knows exactly what he's capable of. It's a man that sees he's got plenty to gain, too. It's a man that's a real leader. Not like Merle, just working off fear and intimidation and muscles and angel's dust or whatever he'd found that night. Not the Governor, crossing lines even Merle wouldn't cross, a different kind of crazy. Not like Daryl himself, terrified of having people depend on him, terrified of letting them down, of being only what his brother was.

Rick ain't, not in the same way, not anymore.

"Carl! Everyone!" Rick paces a couple times, like tryin' to gather his thoughts, waiting for everyone to come about.

Rick puts a hand to his son's neck when he's close enough, then his shoulder.

Carl asks, "What?" when his dad does nothing but consider him.


	25. Negative

It quickly dissolves into another argument. Abraham- again- doesn't want to waste time on useless wild chases. Says, "We got damned lucky twice, those sisters there." He waves a finger toward Maggie and Beth. "You think luck is gonna hold up? We got shit to do, people!"

But Rick's done with this. Like Daryl'd thought, like it was the news Rick was waiting for to make a decision, to offer up the options. "No," Rick tells him. "_You_ got shit to do. If my daughter _could_ be out there, I'm going to find her. What you do is up to you. You say you need people, you got them here. People that know how to survive. That know how to keep people alive. You can wait for me, or you can go."

Rick looks back to his son, then looks to Daryl. So much can be said without saying a word. Rick is asking, permission or agreement or support, he's not sure, and it doesn't really matter. Daryl glances over to Beth, who's slipped her hand into Maggie's, but she's givin' Daryl those big resolved eyes. That's when he realizes he doesn't even need to ask her, he _knows_ her. He knows what she's thinking, already, knows what she's feeling in her bones.

He thinks of her handing him the first bottle of Judith's life, lettin' him hold her, cradle her, and not one of them thinking he wasn't safe around her. He remembers listening to Beth sing in the middle of the nights, quietly, when Judy woke hungry and squalling.

All Daryl has to do is barely incline his head, put his chin a centimeter closer to his chest.

Michonne gives a more decisive nod when Rick glances to her next.

Rick turns his gaze back to Abe. "I'm going to find my people, first. My daughter." He throws his gaze over all of them. "Everyone's got a choice. DC now, or DC in a little bit."

"Well," Abraham says, "we've fucked around enough. We _have to_ get this man to DC. Or there's no reason to save your daughter." He taps the back of his knuckles against Rosita's shoulder.

Rick only replies, "Doesn't matter what world we live in. I'm gonna keep my family- all of it- alive in it."

"Good luck with that. Come on," Abe says, spinning on his feet, making toward his area of camp.

"Negatory." Eugene says, without moving.

It's Glenn that asks him, "Man, what's up with you?"

* * *

Sorry about the plot-heavy chapters, I promise you'll get some more Bethyl once I'm done fixing my own error. :p


	26. Stop

Rick takes Daryl, Sasha, Glenn and Bob to follow what there was of a trail.

Before he leaves, Daryl can't stop himself from nudging Maggie. Tilting his head to where Beth is opening up a package of stale crackers for herself and Carl. He can't stop himself from telling Maggie to keep safe, but it comes out more like a question, a plea.

She only gives him half a smile.

The trail crossed the road they'd been avoiding. They find a trashed, empty can of Similac formula. Two or three miles in, they break through the trees, into what was once a driveway but now the trees, broken branches, dead tall grass have overtaken it.

If they followed the lane to the left, Daryl was sure they'd find a property.

He asks Rick, "How we doin' this?"

Rick replies after a moment of thought, "Let's just have a look first. A good one. Not another Terminus."

So they stick to either side of the lane, moving through the trees, as silent as you can be in the dying winter woods. It starts to thin the closer they get to the end of the lane, becomes harder to find cover without the green leaves of summer.

Around the house, in front of the door, is a line of scraps, metal, tin cans, forks and spoons, strung up.

Before they can get within 20 yards of the place, before they can make any sort of plan or decision now, a voice shouts, "Stop there! I can see you moving!"


	27. Found

That voice. Daryl knew that voice. The low growl, the demand for retribution, the threat in it. He knows that voice.

Rick puts his hands up. He steps clear. He walks into the yard of the house, slow.

"Tyreese?"

Daryl glimpses movement in a window. The movement of what could have been the barrel of a gun, or an eyeball.

"Rick?"

Then Sasha is running, straight from the tree she'd been behind, sleek and thin and uncaring as she flies. The door swings open with a yelled, "Carol- Carol!"

Sasha sobs hard when she slams into her brother's chest.


	28. Problems

When Carol had come to the door, her hair a little longer, her clothes a bit ragged, her face a lot sadder, he had felt like he was looking at a friend and a stranger at the same time. But she's got a sling around her chest, and there's a wriggling mass of arms and legs and soft baby hair poking from it.

When Rick goes to his knees, it's like the first time he'd seen her, all bloody in Maggie's arms, except this time it's not misery. It's the best kind of relief.

Carol's saying, "We were hopin' we'd see your faces again."

And Rick's giving her a look, and he's asking how, and he's cryin' when she puts his youngest in his arms.

Tyreese asks, "Did anyone else make it?" and they waste little time taking what they want from the house and heading back to their camp.

They tell bits of their story on the way, but it feels strange. Daryl can't seem to figure out what the situation is between Tyreese and Carol, and they don't mention it. They aren't uneasy, but it feels like all their interactions are heavy, full of awful gravity. And Daryl knows, things between Rick and Carol ain't all sunshine now, not even when she saved his daughter, because... some things, some people didn't come back.

Even he's not sure what he sees when he looks at Carol anymore.

Daryl just wants to get back to camp. He feels antsy, for no real reason. This is a win. This is a good day.

They're not too far from the road when he begins to hear it. Underneath the sounds of their footsteps, scuffling and crinkling in the underbrush, the silence of the birds. Steps somewhere farther off that don't belong to their group. The sudden, loud crash of a body crashing down, the dead's groan.

"Shit."


	29. You Were Right

When they can barely see the herd anymore, gone over the edge of a small hill, and there's only handfuls of scavengers and [stragglers] left, the slow ones, the ones with broken limbs. Daryl wastes no time, he's off before the others. He puts down four of them on his way to the other side of the road, going full bore to where they'd left the others.

He can hear them, when he propels back into the woods. He can hear one, or more, dragging around. He adjusts his direction just enough to put a knife through the closest.

He can hear Rick and the others coming. He can hear his own heartbeat.

It's a stray thought, sneaky and painful: _I just got her back._

When he throws himself over their own noise line, he pulls up short.

They look frightened, but they're huddled in the center of camp, backs to each other in a circle.

Beth stands at his sudden appearance, he's out of breath and sweatin' and got enough gore on him to look pretty fuckin' bad, but Maggie gets there first. "Where's Glenn, where's the others?"

"Behind me," is all he can get out. His shoulders unbunch, just enough, at the sight of Beth, of everyone alright. "Any walkers?"

Abe gestures towards the other side of the camp, where they'd left a body that had come near to their alarm. "Just the one so far."

Beth breaks in, "We could hear them. A lot of them."

Daryl nods. "Time to pack up. Gotta go."

He can hear Rick and Glenn, Sasha and Tyreese and Bob and Asskicker coming, stepping over the barrier. He hears the clatter when someone knocks against it, hopes the walkers are far enough away. Everyone else is shoving shit into bags and leaving anything they didn't need, but Beth isn't, she's come closer to Daryl. Her voice is low when she asks, "What's going on?"

"Can't afford to be out in herd territory anymore. There's a house not far, we'll go there for the night."

"Did you find the end of the trail?"

"Beth, we found-" But then the baby makes a squeak and Beth's already turning. She doesn't move yet, not like Carl, who's head whipped up so fast he coulda broken his neck. He's gone to her, whispering her name over and over. It's too hard for Daryl to watch, too sweet. Too needed.

Beth's frozen, though. Just staring at the little baby, staring at that little spark of hope wrapped up in Carl's arms, now. When she brings her eyes to his, disbelievin', he thinks she murmurs, "I didn't think..."

There's nothing he can do to stop it, he has to touch her. Just a hand to her elbow, holding it, tight. It ain't really enough for him- not when he's just been throwing prayers up while he high-tailed it through the woods. He doesn't know if he could lose her again.

But now's not the time, not for touching, or grand gestures, or trying to falter through words. Instead, he says, "You were right. Go. See her. I'll get your stuff."


	30. Thank You

He's thankful when Rick declares- for everyone, in that leader voice that brooked no argument from Abraham- that they'd get the house set up and sleep, then get down to talking about what they'd be doing, all of them together. With all of them, sixteen, preparing the house takes little time, but Daryl makes sure they have enough alarms, enough warning. Really, what he wants to do is say fuck all this shit and find Beth, but it was his own fuck up at the funeral home in the first place. It was his own disregard for her safety. Besides, he knows she's in there picking bugs out of an opened bag of brown rice to make food for Judith.

They all stay in the house that night, Rick's orders. They'd keep watch out the boarded up windows. He's ignored everyone else who's tried to talk to him, waving them off. He keeps thinkin' about how he bolted through the woods, leaving the others to find their way back safely and he feels badly enough about that abandonment that he hasn't even held Judy yet. He's been thinking too much and trying so hard to not think.

It feels like it takes too long, it's dark by the time he's checking the lock on the door, sliding a bureau in front of it that someone had brought down from a bedroom. He should eat. He should sleep. He should make arrows, check his bow. He should find some new pants, cause the knees were starting to blow out. There were a hundred things he should be doing, but all he can do is go to her.

The house is filled with bodies. It's hushed in the house, like they were all waiting for something awful to happen. He couldn't blame them: their luck had been terribly good as of late.

Up the creaking stairs, down the hall, he finds her alone in what was probably some parents' room once. Through the cracked door, he sees her, in candlelight. She's on the edge of a queen-sized bed, holding a sleeping Judith, just starin' at her. Barely moving but for her breath.

When he says her name, she jumps.

When she relaxes at the sight of him, it makes him feel light. She stands slow, turns away from him to put Judith down on the bed without waking her, tucks the comforter around her. Her movements are measured, he notices, and he wonders if she feels... _it_, whatever this feeling is right now, too.

He feels like he can barely suck in air, but she's moving like molasses, towards him.

He says her name again, no other words will come out, not in any kind of order, not with any sort of sense.

She hugs him. A real hug- her arms around his neck, her slight body pressed from cheek to thigh against his. She's too tiny in his arms, he's feeling too clumsy and rough and desperate for something as fragile as Beth, but it doesn't stop his arms from automatically coming up around her. His palms flat on her shoulder blades, until his fingers dig into her sweater.

Her voice is pitched low, a hum right next to his ear, saying, "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."


	31. Fault

She pulls back, sliding her hands over his shoulders as she goes flat on her feet. She's lookin' at him entirely different than before, but he still thinks of the first time she wriggled her little arms around him. He thinks briefly of Zach. He thinks of her pulling her damn sweater back up her shoulder, the unruly pulse he'd felt in his bloodstream when she'd done it. He thinks now that maybe that's when it started.

He touches the collar of her sweater.

He breaks her silence, asks under his breath, "What're you thanking me for?"

One side of her mouth tips, the slightest of smiles. She shrugs her shoulders, rolls her eyes, teasing him: "You know," she says, mocking him.

But he doesn't. He doesn't know why she'd thank him, and he doesn't know what to call this feeling inside him.

He drops his hands from her. Has to step back. Needs the space to pull oxygen in. "Didn't do anything."

"You did."

He takes another step back from her simple, unwavering vehemence. He leans back against the doorframe, trying to act like he isn't baffled by her. He scoffs.

"Daryl." She says his name like she's scolding him. "Without you, none of us would be here at all."

And she turns her back, again, fidgeting around the side of the bed, like what she's just said isn't something he'd like to argue the finer points of. Like she couldn't fathom a reason why he'd feel useless, worthless. She pulls the blanket back, toeing her boots off, too young to move like that, like she feels 80. She sits on the bed without shifting the mattress, so she doesn't jostle Judy.

He straightens up. Squirms a bit himself with knowing that's his cue to go, but not wanting to leave yet. She rolls her shoulders, angles her head to gaze at him. "You said a proper hi to Jude yet?"

Daryl shakes his head, chews his cheek till it aches. He thinks of earlier, breaking across the road when the walkers had gone by, leaving Carol with Judy, and the rest of them to deal with whatever he'd left. Rick and them, they were all capable, but they depended on him- it wasn't his best choice to be cutting loose from the group, worrying about her and- and the others and what could have been happening somewhere else. He sighs hard.

"Daryl." She says it so delicately, he looks up sharply- he feels a flush when he sees the look on her face. He knows, he _knows_ she'd just seen it, the struggle, the thoughts in his head. He doesn't know if he's slipping, giving himself away easier now, or if she's just got better vision than everyone else.

He knows it's unsettling.

She only tilts her head to the opposite side of the bed, the other side of Judy, and asks, "Why don't you stay with us a while?"


	32. We'll Be Good

He watches her sleep because it still doesn't feel real, that she's here. He'd spent a lot of nights on watch with her curled up alone in the suckass camp in the woods, after the prison fell; but then he'd worked hard _not_ to look at her. It'd been easier then, to try not to be involved in life. To not get close. To not _care_ anymore.

But now, he stares. He still had his boots on, and his jacket and vest, he had a crick building in his shoulder, but it was ok. He'd sat high on the bed, leaning against the headboard, and listened to Beth breathe until she'd fallen asleep right along with Lil Asskicker.

He didn't know what to do.

He figures he's going to have to find the word, the label for what was inside him. For her. He at least knew he wasn't going to be able to live in denial. He'd have to admit it to himself, at the least.

He knows he'd die to keep her alive.

He lets out another sigh, content to rest his dirty hand on Judith's clean onesie-covered back. Beth is right there, close enough that he could touch her if he was comfortable enough with it. He may not know what he's going to do about what was between them, but he knew everything else he was going to do now. Keep them alive. Rick and Maggie and Glenn. Beth, Carl, Judith. They were the truest family he'd ever known, as guilty as he feels for putting them in a different league than Merle.

He loved Merle, they had blood and history and they would have done anything for the other. But not like he was with Rick, definitely not the way Beth lived inside him.

He's yanked out of his thoughts when Maggie's voice breaks the silence, a muted, "Hey."

He thinks about pulling his hand up quick off Baby Judith's back, but thinks about Maggie tellin' him he was part of their family, with or without his connection to her baby sister. He thinks about how it's a kind of validation she gave him, without being obvious, without makin' it hard for him to swallow. He relaxes the tendons in his fingers. He doesn't need to nod, just meets her eyes, he feels so calm for a moment.

Maggie only sort of smiles. Not a true smile. Not a distinct one. Just an ease around her mouth that made him think she might call the scene "adorable" if he was more playful. She asks, "You want a turn on watch?"

He's never _not_ had a turn on watch. Does he want to leave this make-believe world for it? Not really. But with them here, people that needed his protection, that he had to keep alive, he couldn't imagine slacking now.

He's careful when he pulls out of the bed. He looks around for a minute, like there's somethin' he should be doing. Like he ain't ready yet. Maybe he just wants to touch the girls, a goodbye, but he's too self-conscious with Maggie's eyes still on him.

She follows him out the bedroom, down the hall, off the stairs. In the kitchen, he rubs his eyes and looks at the stock of cans. He bets he'll get shit from Carl tomorrow when he takes the last two cans of Vienna sausages, quite a score.

She finally asks, "Can we talk?"

He shrugs, shoves another sausage into his mouth. "'Bout what?"

"Beth."

He glances up at her, from under his bangs, gauging where she's going with this. But her face is not hard, not resolved. It's easy, thoughtful. So he nods. "What about her?"

"I just... I wanted to thank you-" He tries to scoff it off again, but she trucks ahead, completely ignoring his defiance. "Beth. It's her, you know, but it isn't her. She's... I don't know. Better. But I think you had something to do with it."

He doesn't feel comfortable with all this gratitude when he still doesn't feel like he's... done _enough_. Because Beth shouldn't have had to do the things she'd done. And he should have killed Joe and them before they'd even caught up to Rick. Because they hadn't been prepared _enough_ at the prison, in the event it fell. They'd scattered in the chaos, lost the baby- and in the hands of Carol, whom he wasn't sure they could trust sometimes.

He hated to have the thought, but it had been a while since Rick had told him about that, about Karen and David. He'd had time now to do more than react immediately. He knows he failed there, too; not noticing what was happening with Carol.

Maggie seems to understand his discomfort enough to change the subject, but not to anything that made him feel less awkward: "Carol's been wantin' to talk to you. I can tell."

He grunts.

He wants to bolt when she gets all direct-like, "I gotta ask you. Did you and Carol ever... have anything?"

He jerks his head in negation. Maggie nods unquestionably. "Just had to know. She's different, too. But not the way Beth is."

He sets his empty can down, finally speaks. "Yeah. It's her, but it ain't her."

There's some silence between them, not uncomfortable, but heavy with thought, until Maggie ends the conversation by saying, "I know you're a... I know you worry. About being a good man. Just thought you should know, Daddy wouldn't have minded you and Beth, I don't think. Neither do I."


	33. Family

"Rick," he distracts him from Judith and Carl and Beth.

Ever since he's been back from watch, even gone and back again from scouting the road, he's felt Beth's eyes on him. It's not bad, but he feels his neck heat up everytime.

He tries to act normal, keep up with business, but sometimes he gives in and looks back, and each time she gifts him with a smile. He tries to keep her from being a distraction.

He pulls Rick aside. "We gotta figure out what we're doing."

Rick nods. "I know."

"Whatever you decide... stay or go, we gotta be smart." It's hard for him to say what he does next, it's confessing to things he isn't sure he's come to terms with yet. It's showing need- and it's terribly uncomfortable, but still, he must: "Can't lose 'em again."

It's strange, he's still not used to it: the way Rick understands. Merle, he was a smart son of a bitch, and could read things, just like Daryl could. Somethin' their daddy had actually taught them. But Merle used the information, even against his baby brother; found weaknesses and exploited them for his benefit. It's still abnormal, it still makes him want to flinch inside, waiting for a blow that he logically know won't come when he feels Rick see into him without ever needing a word.

Rick goes from serious, nodding, agreeing, to a half smirk, a raised eyebrow. "You and Beth?"

It's just enough to make him shuffle his feet. Next to whatever Hershel thought of this in the afterlife, he's most worried here. Under Rick's close, amused scrutiny. He finally mumbles, "Ain't- It ain't anything..."

But Daryl can tell, Rick's heard the unsaid _yet_ at the end of his sentence.

Daryl's relief is so acute it almost hurts when Rick, instead of asking more, hammering him with all the questions Daryl's seen on each of their faces since Beth was back with them, he hollers out, "Family meeting!" for the others to hear.


End file.
